Gendering the Settler State: White Women, Race, Liberalism and Empire in Rhodesia, 1950-1980

This book argues that white women often held ambiguous, inconsistent and complicated attitudes towards issues such as race, liberalism, gender and empire, marking a significant departure from the current scholarship on women and empire, which has tended to situate them in ossified roles. In doing so, Gendering the Settler State argues for the importance of a more nuanced and fine-grained analysis of the role of white women in the colonial enterprise.

Kate Law is a women’s, gender and empire historian who specialises in twentieth-century sub-Saharan African history. She is currently a lecturer in Gender Studies in the centre for Africa studies at the University of the Free State, South Africa.